Germany

This is the kind of news item that has Angela Merkel in political trouble: According to mayor Bernd Pohlers of the eastern town of Saxony Waldenburg, the asylum seekers refused to accept the work that was offered to them after they arrived in the country. The local council spent £600 arranging for the men to have uniforms but were stunned when they were told they would not complete it because »

Undeterred by recent murders committed by Muslim refugees, Angela Merkel stands fully behind her decision to admit more than 1 million Syrian refugees. She made this clear in a recent press conference the theme of which was “we can still do this.” But Merkel’s key coalition partner, Horst Seehofer the premier of Bavaria, today rejected this view. “‘We can do this’ – I cannot, with the best will, adopt this »

Donald Trump says that people from France and Germany could face “extreme vetting” before entering the United States because their countries have been “compromised by terrorism.” Trump also argued that France and Germany are to blame for the terrorism that is “compromising” them. “It’s their own fault,” he said. “They allowed people to come into their territory.” Trump isn’t wrong to blame immigration policy for the terrorism rocking France and »

Today, a 21-year-old refugee from Syria killed a woman with a machete in southwestern Germany. Police apprehended the murderer after a motorist deliberately ran him over. The man previously had been charged with causing bodily harm in an incident the police declined to describe. The fatal attack on the woman does not appear to have been an act of terrorism. Police believe the act stemmed from “relationship difficulties” between the »

That appears to be the case, based on what we know now, with Ali Sonboly, the 18 year old Iranian-German who went on a rampage in Germany yesterday. I assume that Sonboly’s family is Muslim (how observant, I have no idea) but that doesn’t seem to have played a part in his spree, notwithstanding two witnesses who say they heard him shout “Allahu akbar.” Rather, he appears to be a »

I’m back from my trip to “New Europe,” specifically to Prague and Krakow. I highly recommend both cities to potential tourists, and I find the concept of New Europe apt. Poland and the Czech Republic suffered grievously from the two great scourges of the 20th century — Nazism and Communism. So far, they have avoided the scourge of the present century — radical Islam. They have avoided it because Muslims »

Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post reports that President Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are “soul mates.” Why? Because Obama “disdains. . .needy, showboating allies and [Merkel] is neither.” That’s hilarious. Who on the world stage is more of a showboater than Barack Obama — he of the speech in front of Greek columns, the shockingly pretentious Cairo lecture to Muslims, and the receding ocean tides? Obama’s “disdain” for »

Britain’s Daily Mail must be one of the world’s oddest news sources, but occasionally it does some good original reporting. That is the case with respect to its coverage of the epidemic of sexual assault that has erupted across Germany: [Michelle] is just one of 120 women who were abused that horrific night in the [cathedral] square, which is dotted with bars, nightclubs and coffee shops, and is where Cologne »

During my time at law school, I had to good fortune to study under a great scholar of the Constitution, rather than, say, a glib community organizer. That scholar was Gerald Gunther. Gunther was born in Germany in 1927. His Jewish family had deep roots in Germany, and Gunther said they were reluctant to leave even as the Nazi government increasingly oppressed Jews. Young Gunther, unaffected by tradition, had no »

In a coda to the New Year’s Eve rampages in Cologne and elsewhere in Germany that Scott and I wrote about here and here, a leaked police report describing the outrages that occurred in Cologne has been published in the German press. The Telegraph reports: Ministers have said there is no evidence asylum seekers were involved in the violence. But the leaked police report, published in Bild newspaper and Spiegel, »

John wrote about the industrial strength sexual assaults in Cologne on New Year’s Eve. A reader directs our attention to two complementary videos that offer another look at the New Year’s Eve festivities in Cologne. The first (below) provides eyewitness testimony by Ivan Jurcevic, a hotel club bouncer. Jurcevic describes what happened at in front of the Cologne Cathedral (Kölner Dom). The translation is by Christopher Cohn, who posted the »

From the New York Times: German authorities said on Tuesday that coordinated attacks in which young women were sexually harassed and robbed by hundreds of young men on New Year’s Eve in the western city of Cologne were unprecedented in scale and nature. The assault, which went largely unreported for days…. In Germany, as in the U.S., the liberal media consider themselves gatekeepers whose primary role is to suppress stories »

As Steve noted earlier today, Marine Le Pen’s right-wing National Front (FN) has done extraordinarily well in the first round of France’s regional elections. In addition, the ruling Socialist Party has suffered a huge setback. The second and decisive round of voting will occur next Sunday, and a lot can happen between now and then. However, the Socialists have already dropped out of second-round elections in two major regions and »

In a post last week, I argued that Germany’s main motive for wanting to take in so many Middle Eastern refugees is the desire to cope with short-term labor shortages and long-term population decline. I also pointed out that most European nations face different circumstances and thus don’t share Germany’s motive or enthusiasm. A few days later, the Washington Post struck the same theme in an article called “The refugee »

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said that Germany will take 800,000 refugees this year and 500,000 annually over the next several years. Merkel no doubt will receive acclaim for humanitarianism, while nations that balk at taking refugees will be denounced. I don’t doubt that there is a humanitarian component to Merkel’s decision, and in some respects her willingness to take in so many refugees is a feel good story. But »

Europe is paying the second installment on the debt for its indifference to the slow-motion disaster in Syria. The first installment was (and will continue to be) an increase in the threat of domestic terrorism. The second installment is the mass migration of Syrians and other Middle Easterners into Europe. According to Johannes Hahn, the EU Commissioner for European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiation (we’ll know the U.S. has hit »